Despite its apparent sense of humour, the universe is a cold and foreboding place. It does not recognise care, cruelty, love, pain, and empathy. It is neither the enemy nor the ally; it simply ‘is’. Primitive civilisations over the ages have tried to compensate for this cold, sobering fact by fabricating ludicrous belief systems called religions, centred around all-knowing, all-seeing, fantasy beings called Gods.

Like children who filled their boredom and loneliness with imaginary friends – created to be all they want them to be – so did these certifiable nutters create creators of everything, as an explanation for everything; available 24/7 as a conduit for credit and blame. All the positive things are because we are all ‘Being blessed’ (not to be mistaken for being ‘Brian Blessed’) and all the shit that happens is because ‘The Creator‘ (not to be mistaken for the creator V’ger was seeking in ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’) work ‘in mysterious ways’.

Not in my universe!

I cannot influence or control the universe – wars will happen, governments will fuck up, the wrong people will die, the banks will never learn, tax-cattle will get State Stockholm Syndrome – but I can influence some of what happens in my self-universe. My self-universe is made up of unique perceptions, sensations, thoughts, and emotions that are experienced from my own unique perspective – a private self-universe with spiralling galaxies of loves, hates, empathies, prejudices, sentimentalities, vices, voyeurisms, taboos, guilty pleasures, and hidden pains.

No one will ever be able to cross the barrier into my self-universe. No person will ever experience their self-universe in the exact same way I experience mine – even when other self-universes converge in the same physical space, as they tend to do from time-to-time, the way they perceive their self-universial reality (the way they feel when they hear a great tune, watch a sunrise, taste a drink, hear a joke) is totally subjective; unique to them, and them alone.

Compared to physical reality (I was going to say ‘the one that came from a big bang’, but then didn’t we all, if you know what I mean), a self-universe is a harmonious place to live in because there are many ways to control and influence it. I play by my own rules. In my own self-universe, for instance, I decide what is serious, relevant, satire, or a freak-show. I decide the important headlines, the greatest hits, and the latest trends. I decide who’s fuckable and who’s forgettable; I decide the truths and the lies; the laughs and the cries.

Sadly, though, most self-universes are conditioned to be unaware of such potential for self-universal determination. Instead, they are led to believe they are beholden to the perceptions of other self-universes – confused and conditioned to live by a set of collective fabrications that have been given form and false meaning in the physical realm; non entities without physical form, not even at a molecular level. They drift along, living someone else’s dream, playing by someone else’s rules, playing out someone else’s act; with firewalls erected in their own self-universes, blurring any perception of what is real.

Not in my universe!

With contradiction being a given in most self-universal circumstances, the most exciting thing about my self-universe is that most of the time I haven’t got a clue what’s going to happen next. Also, unlike the physical universe, my self-universe is self-aware and recognises, and is capable of, care, affection, pain, loss, joy, jealousy, sadness, guilt, anger, and gargantuan acts of magnificence. What is more awesome about a self-universe is the power to create any fictional reality where the laws of science don’t apply.

If you explore your self-universe deep enough, you’ll realise that while there are immutable laws in the physical realm (physics and shit prevents you from flying or walking through walls), a great deal of what is supposedly ‘real’ is fabricated anyway – you can’t touch ‘the law’, or punch patriotism in the face; tax doesn’t have a molecular structure, Governments, borders, even countries, don’t really exist. There is no such thing as a forest; you cant touch a forest – you can touch individual trees, though. You dig?

By exploring the self-universe, you can learn a great deal about the physical universe and allow the two to coexist in perfect harmony. It’s not always perfect in my self-universe and it does not hold all the answers (sometimes it even causes a few problems), but nobody in my self-universe pulls the strings or works in mysterious ways; there is no God to turn to when it all goes FUBAR; no higher being to be loved, obeyed, feared and worshipped. No one is the King of my self-universe. No one, that is, except me!